This presentation will focus on the redefinition of the figure of the revenger brought about by Hamlet’s ambiguous sexual identity. Though Elizabethan tragedy frequently features anti-heroic revengers, Hamlet’s heroic limitation is unique in that it is intrinsically linked to his androgynous nature. The highly patriarchal frame of revenge tragedies is best encapsulated by the 1615 title-page of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy featuring male characters brandishing phallic daggers, with the villain manhandling the distressed heroine to the cry of “Stop her mouth”. In a radical departure from that type of frame, the Danish prince is an indecisive intellectual torn between his multiple contradictions. Afflicted with “my weakness and my melancholy” (II.2.554), which was then considered a disease hampering men’s will and agency, Hamlet cannot find his place within the rigid world and system represented by the solid walls of Elsinore, where an encouraged separation between sexes leaves no room for androgyny to exist. Hamlet’s ambiguous sexual identity has influenced how actors and actresses grappled with the part over history. Playing an androgynous Hamlet progressively became more normative for nineteenth-century actors influenced by the Romantics’ embracing of melancholia and introspection rather than militaristic values. Not only did Hamlet’s supposed lack of virility turn him into a role model for nineteenth-century actors, but it also made him an ideal candidate for cross-gender casting as early as late eighteenth-century. Performers such as Sarah Bernhardt strikingly chose to portray a more determined and expressive Hamlet, whose sexual ambiguity was portrayed onstage via the actress’s body. In Svend Gade’s 1921 adaptation of the play into a silent movie, Hamlet literally became a woman forced by her parents into the disguise of a male prince, torn between her revenge and her love for Horatio. These explorations of Hamlet’s gender identity are supported, I argue, by an interpretation of the play that highlights the Dane’s multiple references to his self-perceived androgyny, and embracing of his feminine side.